Conservative, foreign policy wonk, Dan Senor, tells Fox News that -- although he's not completely happy with Barack Obama's approach to Libya -- Sarah Palin and other Republicans were wrong to criticize it after the POTUS' speech last night.
"I don't think what Governor Palin said is terribly constructive.
I don't think what many Republicans leaders have been saying over the last week have been terribly constructive.
Barack Obama -- it is not in his DNA to actually call for regime change, unilateral path toward regime change. It is not who he is.
It's frustrating to me, it's frustrating to a lot of people. But against that backdrop, with that context in mind, you gotta be pretty impressed with the speech he gave.
He made a compelling case for military intervention based on America's interest, American values, and he made a case that America's military has the capacity to do this operation.
And I think conservatives who want a more muscular foreign policy and national security policy -- who've been arguing for dealing with Gaddafi -- should be pleased he's going as far as he is.
And to just take cheap shots at him and holding Obama to standards that are just unrealistic -- I don't know where that gets us."
Last night, Palin called Obama's policy and speech "full of chaos", "dodgy", and "dubious."
The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial today on a growing schism in the GOP -- one heightened by presidential politics that's likely to get more severe as 2012 approaches.
President Obama made a substantial case for his Libya intervention for the first time Monday evening, and however overdue and self-referential ("I refused to let that happen"), we welcome the effort. Perhaps it will give Republicans a reason to emerge as constructive, rather than partisan, foreign-policy critics as well.
We say "perhaps" because the instinctive temptation for some Republicans has been to oppose the Libyan mission led by a Democratic Commander in Chief. Some object to the operation's cost amid record deficits, others gripe about Mr. Obama's reflexive bow to the "international community," while still others are responding to a part of the GOP cable-TV and Internet base that wants fewer foreign interventions after Iraq and Afghanistan.
.... We understand the instinctive mistrust of this most political of Presidents, a man whose every decision now is rooted in his desire for re-election. This is not a President who leads from the front—on the budget, or on Libya. But that doesn't mean that Republicans should wash their hands of American global leadership. Their opportunity is to make the case for what American leadership should look like.
